New York, NEW YORK!

So I have this friend Braden. He's one of the people who went with me to Gettysburg. He and my roommate Jess became good friends and they were supposed to go to New York sometime before Jess left for California, however that never worked out. So...Braden and I went. We tried to get some other people to come with us, but that just didn't work out. Despite that I had an amazing time...sleep deprived, but a fantastic time.

We bought tickets for the 2:30am Chinatown bus, but it turns out that they don't have a 2:30am but, but a 3:30 am bus, so we spent about 45 minutes wandering around 6th and I Street NW DC at 2 in the morning waiting for the bus. We weren't the only luckily ones. The exciting adventure of that part of the trip was our new friend the rat...a huge, gigantic rat. We tried to get a picture, but turns out he's a little camera shy and once we took out our camera he refused to show himself clearly.

Once we were on the bus I thought...yay, now we can settle down and sleep for the next 5 hours or so, but no...first it was cold, but the most interesting part was that the bus driver kept stopping every so often on the side of the road and get out walk around and get back in...what was going on I don't know, but we did eventually make it to New York.

The bus drops you off in Chinatown New York and we just kind of followed the crowd until we ended up at subway stop. Thanks to my and Jess' wandering in Europe via train and subway/metro I'm every familiar with getting use to new cities and figuring out the public transportation. I'm not shy about asking for directions. We made our way up to Time Square and one of the first things I did was buy a map. I've learned the hard way the value of a detailed map when wandering on foot in a new city.

This was one of my favorite signs in Time Square...so get out and VOTE People!

We spent quiet a bit of time trying to decide if we wanted to go to a Broadway show, but after standing in line and seeing the prices and the times we decided that we wanted to spend more time actually seeing the city then watching a show. That will have to happen some other trip to New York. So we wandered. We went up to Rockefeller Square and then hopped on the subway back down the Battery Park to take a ferry out to Ellis and Liberty Island. We waiting in line for about 2 hours, but when all was said and done it was worth it. You can spend an entire day just at Ellis Island.

Us in line for two hours...good thing we're good at entertaining ourselves.

On the ferry

I had family come through Ellis Island and it was interesting to see a little of what they might have experienced

After the Islands we started our way toward Uptown, walking of course, so we could see more. We ended up at the World Trade Center site and then on to Wall St.

And for those who like the National Treasure movie we went to the corner of Wall and Broadway and saw the Trinity Church.

(yeah I'm a dorky history loving girl).

Having satisfied our curiosity for downtown and just about done walking we jumped on the subway once again and took it up to the temple. It was closed, but it was fun to see it. A random building in the middle of Manhattan. We then went to Central Park. I was definitely done walking by that time and sat down for a while, while Braden wandered around. We then found a pizza place, for New York pizza. Then we started on our way back. Our plan was to stop by the Empire State Building, but as we walked down Broadway, near Times Square, now in full night time activity we realized that we weren't making good enough time to make it to see the Empire State Building and back to our bus in time. The place was packed full of people! So we found our way to the closest subway and went back to Chinatown. We made it with about 15 minutes to spare.

The ride home was just as interesting...our bus driver got cut off and had to slam on the breaks and the van in front of us started fish tailing and it looked like an accident was inevitable. But the van righted itself and we moved on. We made it back to DC by 2 am and home by 3:30 am. The metro was still running and we managed to make the last train home. I was so exhausted. I slept until about 11 am. We had a very busy 24 hours!

Good Times!

Quarter of a Century Old!

It's a big year for birthdays...my little sisters keep growing up, even though I moved out of the house. My "little" sister Becky (I put little in quotation marks since she's a good 3 inches taller then me :)) celebrates her 25th birthday today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

A quarter of a century old and still kicking! I remember when I was 25...

Gettysburg again :)

I went with some friends to Gettysburg. Even though I'll been there several times I really enjoyed it and learned something new. They just completed the new Visitors Center. I really enjoyed it. It put into perspective how many people were involved in the Civil War. The numbers never sunk in before.

After spending several hours in the Visitor's Center we went touring around Gettysburg. It was a beautiful day outside.

They had some reenactors were giving a demonstration on how they maintain volley shots with the Civil War rifles. It was cool to watch.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times I go to Gettysburg I learn something new.

That Time of Year

August is just around the corner and every month seems to go faster then the last. It's amazing how each day can seem like a week and yet each month seems like a day. As I mentioned before I have a lot of reasons to celebrate in August. Birthdays upon birthdays to brighten my days.

My new roommate Melanie (yes she's the same Mel in my previous posts, but now she's a roommate...that changes the situation you know) her birthday is this Friday August 1st and Jessica, my 'old' roommate's birthday is August 4th. However Jess is leaving us for a month...left this morning actually :( and so on Saturday July 26th we had a combined birthday party and we throw Reed into the mix for fun. Our threesome birthday party was a blast...or at least I had a good time :)

The people were kind enough to humor me and we had a pinata (the neighbor kids came over and helped out with that one)

and we played pin the Pirate on the Treasure and Kiss the Frog

I was a mean girl and made Mel, Reed and Jess open their gifts in fromt of everyone. It made me smile. I think they liked them :)

Mel was lucky and got a second birthday bash...her coworker Minnetta made her a cake. We sang and ate cake.

I think we should have birthday parties all the time. So much fun!

Niagara Falls

As un-American as it may seem we went to Niagara Falls for the 4th of July weekend. It was amazing. We ended up camping along the Niagara River a few miles up stream. A perfect location for Firework watching since we could see 5 or 6 shows at the same time.


Thursday - July 3rd

Drive there...a little long, but not bad. I ended up in the car with Reed, Brian and Sundee. Sundee & Reed drove. Some of the hi-lights


Gummie Bears - Gummie bears are apparently vital to Brian's existence. So much so that he makes himself sick by eating too many and Reed had to take them away.






Are we going the right way? There are not major freeways through Pennsylvania and Western New York to get to Niagara and we wandered through many a small towns trying to follow the directions from mapquest. At one point we were sure we were going the wrong way, but turns out that mapquest just gave us the wrong mileage, eventually we figured out its easier to follow the signs for 219 north then to try to understand mapquests directions.


The Canadian Boarder...




O Canada!




We made it a fast job setting up camp. We took responsibility for setting up all the tents and laying out all the sleeping bags since we didn't expect the other car with Darin, Jess, Cat and Annie to arrive until 1 or 2 am. Funny story...the kids across the way from our campsite kept setting off their car alarm and Reed threatened that there would be blood if that thing went off in the middle of the night and so...here comes almost 2 am and the second car is arriving and I have to get something out of Sundee's car and I didn't know that if you unlock the car with the key and not the clicker it would set off the alarm...well...lets just say that a car alarm went off and Reed yelled at me, luckily it was too tired to actually get out of bed and carry out his threat and he doesn't even remember yelling at me, but I have witnesses. :P


Friday - 4th of July (and Reed's birthday)


Pancakes - the perfect 4th of July breakfast...and look the boys are cooking :)

We went to the Falls today. WOW that's all I have to say. They are quite amazing! I can't imagine what it must have been like to come upon them for the first time. The river just drops, disappears.




Most of the group...one of my paparazzi shots :)

The Horse Shoe Falls


American Falls - from a distance.


We went on the Maid of the Mist. That was fun and wet. It's the little boat down there. They actually taking you into the mist of the Falls, probably about as close as you can get without being torn up by the torrents.

Waiting in line - An American Pass Time...

We were all given these handy little ponchos to keep us dry.



On the boat, awaiting the wetness

In the Mist...I took these pictures from inside my poncho so my camera didn't get all wet and die







Exiting the Maid of the Mist they drop you off on a little court yard area and the perfect photo op. I think this is one of the most photographed areas.





Having been among the mist of the Falls we now decided to "fly" over the Falls by going on the Farris Wheel...I'm sure it has a name, just like the Eye of London, but we'll just call it the Wheel.


This is the Wheel

After spending at the Falls we went home and had dinner, played games and sang happy birthday to Reed. We went out to the river banks to watch the fireworks. We had a luck vantage point, sitting where we could see the Buffalo firework show, the Niagara Falls show and several others a long the river.

Necessity is the mother of all invention...and we needed someway to cook the hamburgs we planned for dinner. The only problem was that I didn't bring the grill with me and so...




We only lost one hamburg, not too bad!




Waiting for night to fall and the fireworks to start.




Happy Birthday Reed!!! Sundee provided the cake :)





And of course we made s'mores.

Saturday - July 5th

The next day was spent lazing around. Some played games, or read or slept or swam. We went for walks and just spent the day doing a lot of nothing.

The boys went swimming - showing off their mad skills.

These are the geese we met on of walk along the river.

That night we went back to the Falls to see what they looked like light up. Beautiful, however Jess ended up with better pictures if you would like to see them click here

We were lost and looking for the easiest way to get to the Falls and this is what we found...A Sign

Once we returned we had a bonfire and s'mores and some of us went to bed...apparently the rest of them had a rave...I didn't hear a thing. I must have been really tired.

Sunday - July 6th

The next day we packed up camp and head back to the Ol' USA.

We made a brief side trip to Palmyra, NY to see the old Smith homestead, the Scared Grove, the Temple and Hill Camorah. It was beautiful!

Amazing times and great fun. I would totally do it again!